I didn't see the fight live, so I had to wait until the replay on HBO Saturday night to render a qualified opinion. And yes, it was bad, really, really bad, maybe the worst decision I have ever seen. I would make it a tossup with Roy Jones Jr.'s loss in the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, Korea, as the worst ever.

"Timothy Bradley has beaten Manny Pacquiao — God only knows how," was the way HBO announcer Jim Lampley summed it up after the verdict was announced.

Trainer and HBO boxing analyst Emanuel Steward was speechless. "I'm dumbfounded," he said. "I don't know what to say. I have no comment. I'm confused."

HBO scorekeeper Harold Lederman, a former judge, gave Pacquiao the first nine rounds before giving the 10th to Bradley. Pacquiao was by this time cruising with what he thought was an insurmountable lead.

"I've never been as ashamed of the sport of boxing as I am tonight," said Top Rank promoter Bob Arum, who has both Pacquiao and Bradley under contract and is eyeing Nov. 10 for the rematch.

There are always cries of "Fix" after a controversial decision, but I stop short of that, despite reports from Las Vegas that there was some late, heavy money bet on Bradley. I chalk the whole thing up to incompetent judges. More on that later.

The bottom line is that judging a fight is a very subjective enterprise. People see different things from different angles and come up with different conclusions. So what's the solution?

My colleague Buddy Thomas suggested a scoring system much like baseball or football, where points would be awarded for a landed punch to the head or body, and for a knockdown, etc.

That may sound good in theory, but in practice it just doesn't work. A similar system is already in use in Olympic boxing and it has worse decisions than pro boxing.

In the Olympic system there are five judges, each armed with two buttons, one for each fighter. When a fighter lands a clean punch, the judges are supposed to hit the button for that boxer. At least three judges must hit the button for the fighter to score a point, which is shown on a screen over the ring.

That works fine if you have two slow fighters who throw one punch at a time. But — pay attention Buddy — when you have two good fighters with fast hands exchanging punches, it becomes humanly impossible to keep up with those flurries of punches, while at the same time determining if the punch was a clean punch or a partially blocked punch.

By the time a judge records two punches, six more have landed that go unrecorded. If you watched the Olympic fights four years ago in Beijing, you know what I'm talking about. Olympic commentators Teddy Atlas and Bob Papa were appalled at the frequency with which judges missed punches entirely.

There was one instance when a fighter was given a standing eight-count from a clean punch to the jaw and the guy who delivered the punch was not credited with a point. There were several other instances where the fighter getting hit was credited with the point. Yeah, it was that bad.

So how can boxing eliminate bad decisions? Well, it can't actually. Subjectivity does not lend itself to unanimity.

But it can take a big step toward eliminating the really bad decisions by getting rid of the incompetent judges, the guys who don't know a left hook from a left turn, but know the promoter or someone on the state athletic commission.

Applicants for judging should be able to pass a written test showing they have a least a modicum of knowledge about boxing and know the difference between a clean punch and a partially or totally blocked punch.

(That legislation introduced by Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Senate democratic leader Harry Reid that would create a U.S. Boxing Commission would also help.)

The biggest factor in scoring a fight are clean punches. Other considerations include the power of the punch and its effect on the recipient of said punch, ring generalship, effective aggressiveness (with the emphasis on "effective"), and defense.

Obviously a clean right cross is worth more than a jab. How many jabs equal a right cross? That, my friends, is up to the beholder, which is one reason there will always be some disagreement in fights.

So, how did I see the Pacquiao-Bradley fight? Let me say first that I did not think Pacquiao was as fast or as sharp as I've seen him in the past, and he did tire in the late rounds. That said, I still thought he won big, 118-111 (9-2-1 in rounds).

Give Bradley credit for taking all those straight lefts from the Pacman and finishing the fight on an injured ankle (suffered in the fourth round), but the only rounds I thought Bradley clearly won were the 10th and the 12th.

If I leaned over backwards for Bradley, gave him the benefit of every doubt, I still could not see him winning more than four rounds. That's how one-sided the fight was, and why it caused such a tempest.

Bob Hanna covers boxing for The Standard-Times. Contact him at sports@s-t.com

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